NHLPA has requested to meet this week, but refuse to meet on NHL terms.

NHL refuses to meet without precondition.

Our season is going up in smoke as the days go on.

"@DarrenDreger: NHL remains firm, willing to negotiate with the PA by only working off NHL offer tabled last Tues. NHL wants next meeting to be an end pt."

News flash: this isn't negotiating! Both sides shoot negotiation in the face before they even get in a room together. Nothing is going to get done this way. They need to stop sniping at each other through the media and put on their f$&@ing big boy pants and sit down at a table together for more than 90 minutes. Bring in a mod if you have to, but stop tattling on the other guy for being the meanie.

No kidding. I believe that we have a grasp on what each side needs more than Fehr and Bettman do.

haroldsnepsts, you can be the NHLPA negotiatorI will be the NHL negotiator

Here is my first proposal.

50/50 splitWe will pay all current contracts3 year entry level contract limit6 year contract limitI want the new realignment plan as well

Any thoughts?

How can ypu [possibly say "pay all currnet cintracts" and argue that Bettman and the owners are not totally at fault for the lockout? I think that is whole rason there is a lockout to begin with, because the owners don't want to pay the current contracts

Want to fix mistakes? Start with firing the most hated person in hockey.

firing bettman isn't going to end this lockout or solve much of anything except please the anti bettman crowd who are under the delusion that he is the sole creator of all these lockouts

also according to this article, the union knew about the 48 hour window on friday, not just today

The NHLPA was aware Friday - not Tuesday - that players were being contacted by owners.

That day, Mathieu Schneider issued an email to players entitled “Club Officials Contacting Players & Agents”. This is what he wrote:

In the last few hours we have heard about calls today from various club officials to players and agents to discuss the NHL proposal and bargaining. This is interesting, since our understanding has been that the League had banned club officials from talking to players since the beginning of the lockout.

If you get a call, or if there is anything you would like to discuss, please contact me. And, as always, please feel free to contact Don about anything, anytime.

firing bettman isn't going to end this lockout or solve much of anything except please the anti bettman crowd who are under the delusion that he is the sole creator of all these lockouts

also according to this article, the union knew about the 48 hour window on friday, not just today

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The issue of whether the PA found out about it Friday is neither here, nor there. The main issue is that the owners violated their own rules during the lockout, and went behind the unions back to contact players. All this does is cause more distrust between owners and union reps, and create more of a riff in bargaining. Instead of playing politics they need to sit down for 8 hours(a regular work shift for most working stiffs) and hash out their issues. I just want to watch hockey.

Boston Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask suffered a slight groin pull during a Czech League game Tuesday.Czech reporter Roman Jedlicka said via Twitter that Rask, playing for Plzen, left the game after one period."I slightly pulled my groin, it is not serious," Rask told Czech TV, according to Jedlicka's Twitter account. "I had groin problems last year so I took [a] little rest just for precaution."

“That’s a big no-no,” said Gilles LeVasseur, an expert in labour law at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management. “The idea of a union is to deal with one voice.”

“In a true labour-management relationship, this would be deemed as bargaining in bad faith by the employer,” said George Smith, a lecturer in labour law at Queen’s University and a former management-side negotiator for Air Canada and CP Rail. “I knew there was something up when they made the offer public, which again was a very aggressive move.

The issue of whether the PA found out about it Friday is neither here, nor there. The main issue is that the owners violated their own rules during the lockout, and went behind the unions back to contact players. All this does is cause more distrust between owners and union reps, and create more of a riff in bargaining. Instead of playing politics they need to sit down for 8 hours(a regular work shift for most working stiffs) and hash out their issues. I just want to watch hockey.

The distrust is already there. Both sides have not had a friendly past, that is for sure. This is why the leaders of the NHL and the NHLPA need to be fired. They need to get new leadership that won't be so combative. We already know that Bettman is one of the root causes, but Fehr has to go as well. The NHLPA hired him to be their Bettman. In the end, both of these leaders are leading us right where we thought we would go, to another lost season.

The distrust is already there. Both sides have not had a friendly past, that is for sure. This is why the leaders of the NHL and the NHLPA need to be fired. They need to get new leadership that won't be so combative. We already know that Bettman is one of the root causes, but Fehr has to go as well. The NHLPA hired him to be their Bettman. In the end, both of these leaders are leading us right where we thought we would go, to another lost season.

Bettman and the owners want to renege on contracts they signed and offered in the first place and Fehr is fighting to get them what they are owed, which is what the players want him to do and you can't blame them for that.Bettman has locked us out every time the CBA has expired to get what he wants for the new one.

Well Daily and midget your proposal is still a joke players don't gain anything from signing it.

1. Give up 7 % of their salary which is way too much, 52 to 48 would be fair for both sides.

2. On top of that giving up more rights, so they'd have to play for teams even longer just because they were unlucky enough to get drafted by a questionable team

3. That shouldn't even be possible legally, because even talking about changing existing contracts is a big showing the PA the fingers from the owners..Who is responsible for stuff going wrong?

Owners for extending an undersized man, responsible for a lockout hattrick, allowing franchises in places that don't even know what snow means.

Want to fix mistakes? Start with firing the most hated person in hockey.

Bettman and the owners want to renege on contracts they signed and offered in the first place and Fehr is fighting to get them what they are owed, which is what the players want him to do and you can't blame them for that.Bettman has locked us out every time the CBA has expired to get what he wants for the new one.

Once again, if the players were making 43% and not earning enough of the pie, they would strike in a heartbeat in order to get a better deal. Billionaires or not, they are entitled to as fair of a deal as the players are.

The distrust is already there. Both sides have not had a friendly past, that is for sure. This is why the leaders of the NHL and the NHLPA need to be fired. They need to get new leadership that won't be so combative. We already know that Bettman is one of the root causes, but Fehr has to go as well. The NHLPA hired him to be their Bettman. In the end, both of these leaders are leading us right where we thought we would go, to another lost season.

The thing is too, Bettman and Daly refuse to negotiate unless the Fehr brothers are nogotiating on their terms, off their proposal they tabled Tuesday and willing to make only minor changes. That is not negotiating, not at all. At least the Fehr brothers have tried to get in a room and hash it out, but the evil twins refuse to listen unless fehr says we want to accept your proposal but negotiate the "make whole" issue. That is why I am against Bettman, he consistently refuses to negotiate, while Daly says there is nothing to discuss. There is plenty to discuss.

The thing is too, Bettman and Daly refuse to negotiate unless the Fehr brothers are nogotiating on their terms, off their proposal they tabled Tuesday and willing to make only minor changes. That is not negotiating, not at all. At least the Fehr brothers have tried to get in a room and hash it out, but the evil twins refuse to listen unless fehr says we want to accept your proposal but negotiate the "make whole" issue. That is why I am against Bettman, he consistently refuses to negotiate, while Daly says there is nothing to discuss. There is plenty to discuss.

This. I was so infuriated by Bill Daly's statement this morning suggesting that there was "nothing to discuss". The NHLPA presented 3 counter-proposals, and they were rejected within the course of an hour. I took the NHLPA about 2 days to put those together, which is really quite remarkable considering the size of the union and the fact that the NHL has been dictating the terms of this debate and creating artificial timelines. If the owners' position is that there's nothing to discuss unless the player's accept our exact proposal, that is NOT "negotiating".

I can already sense fans starting to turn on the players a bit, and I really wish they would put this into some perspective. You can't simply say "Oh, these guys are all millionaires that get to play a game for a living, just give a little money back". Aside from the fact that most players are "thousand-aires", not millionaires, and may only get a few years a professional contract before they have to retire (or get hurt), it's easy for FANS to give back the players money that they've earned. Heck, fans would love the product just as much if Crosby made $200,000 a year, and the entry level salary was $25,000. But I'm sorry, that's just not realistic for the scope of this business and how much money these players (which ARE the "product") generate.

This is a cash grab by the owners, who basically were caught betting against the future success of their own league when they agreed to the 57/43 split. The contracts already signed were limited once by the rules of the 2005 CBA (salary cap and other provisions), and are now being asked to be reduced AGAIN by the terms of a new CBA that didn't exist at the time the deals were signed. And, oh by the way, all of this is against the backdrop of a league that has made absurd amounts of money over that same period of time.

A lockout is much harder on players than it is on owners. I find it comical that fans actually believe these players want to be wearing suits instead of playing the sport they dedicated their lives to AND earning lucrative contracts for so doing.

The thing is too, Bettman and Daly refuse to negotiate unless the Fehr brothers are nogotiating on their terms, off their proposal they tabled Tuesday and willing to make only minor changes. That is not negotiating, not at all. At least the Fehr brothers have tried to get in a room and hash it out, but the evil twins refuse to listen unless fehr says we want to accept your proposal but negotiate the "make whole" issue. That is why I am against Bettman, he consistently refuses to negotiate, while Daly says there is nothing to discuss. There is plenty to discuss.

the pa has refused to meet on nhl terms and the nhl refuses to meet on the nhlpa terms. the pa are also the ones who refused to come up with a new proposal unless the nhl took salary rollbacks off the table. likewise the owners refused to negotiate until the players accepted rollbacks.

This. I was so infuriated by Bill Daly's statement this morning suggesting that there was "nothing to discuss". The NHLPA presented 3 counter-proposals, and they were rejected within the course of an hour. I took the NHLPA about 2 days to put those together, which is really quite remarkable considering the size of the union and the fact that the NHL has been dictating the terms of this debate and creating artificial timelines. If the owners' position is that there's nothing to discuss unless the player's accept our exact proposal, that is NOT "negotiating".

they weren't really counter proposals, more like alternative proposals. i'm willing to bet that fehr and the union already had majority of the proposals content already written before the owners even presented their latest proposal

I can already sense fans starting to turn on the players a bit, and I really wish they would put this into some perspective. You can't simply say "Oh, these guys are all millionaires that get to play a game for a living, just give a little money back". Aside from the fact that most players are "thousand-aires", not millionaires, and may only get a few years a professional contract before they have to retire (or get hurt)

you can also look at it as the players are wasting their career shelf life trying to get a deal that could very well end up being worse than if they just accepted the one already. you can't tell me that the veteran guys like iginla, st.louis, bertuzzi, etc.. just want to get a deal done so they can get back to playing hockey in what will most likely be their final couple seasons in their careers.